


Monster

by spiderfire



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28114605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/pseuds/spiderfire
Summary: Wolfgang becomes a father.
Relationships: Felix Brenner & Wolfgang Bogdanow, Riley Blue & Wolfgang Bogdanow, Wolfgang Bogdanow/Kala Dandekar
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Monster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Siremele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siremele/gifts).



“I got them!” Felix exclaimed as he burst into the key shop. 

“What?” Wolfgang said, looking up at Felix. Wolfgang sat at a table with hundreds of key blanks scattered across the surface. 

“The plans!” Felix said. He walked over, looked down, and frowned. “Are you okay, Wolfie?”

Wolfgang blinked and shook his head. “Yes, yes of course. Sorry – just lost in thought.” 

Felix snickered, “Lost in thought…” he echoed. “I’d like some of those India Plan thoughts,” he said under his breath. Then, louder, ”Take a look?” He gestured with a rolled tube he held in his hands. 

They swept the unsorted keys back into a bag, to be dealt with another time. Felix pulled the blueprints from their tube and they spread them on the table, weighting down the corners with the small boxes Wolfgang had intended to sort the keys into. Side by side, they leaned over the blueprints. 

“You sure these are the current plans?” Wolfgang asked Felix. 

Felix grinned. “Bergman’s daughter gave them to me herself.” 

Wolfgang leaned over the table. “She gave them to you? Just like that?” 

“Just like that.” 

Wolfgang shook his head and pointed. “This can’t be right.” 

“What?” Felix leaned closer. “Oh,” he replied. “I see.” He flopped down in a chair. 

Wolfgang looked at Felix, “Frauline Bergman played you.” 

Felix nodded, ruefully. “Sorry, Wolfie.” 

“We’ll find another way.” 

****

His feet half dangled from the chair, with just his toes just brushing the smooth wooden floor. He could bend his ankles and swing his legs freely. 

He was sitting at small, round dinner table. A bright white cloth was spread across the table, and a shiny soup pot sat on a trivet in the middle. In front of him was flat yellow bowl filled with a clear broth that had vegetables floating in it. 

To his left was a woman with green eyes and dark skin. She was laughing at something the man to his right said. The man was bald, with a neatly trimmed beard. 

He did not understand a word of what was being said, which struck him as odd. 

The man turned to him and asked a question. He opened his mouth to speak and a stream of liquid gibberish emerged. He expected the man to cuff him for the nonsense, but instead he nodded, as if what he said made sense. 

Wolfgang was so startled he pushed himself away from the table and jumped to his feet, only to find himself standing in next to his own bed, in his own room. 

****

Wolfgang looked up from the key sorting table, where the bins for sorted keys remained stubbornly empty, to see Kala looking across the table at him. He leaned back in his own chair and looked at her. 

“What are you doing?” Kala asked. 

Wolfgang shook his head. “Nothing, I guess.” 

“Don’t you usually go to the baths, to do nothing?” 

Wolfgang reached across the small kitchen table for a mug that was sitting on the table in Kala’s sun-strewed kitchen. He picked it up and cradled it in his hands as he glanced around the small apartment. “This is looking more like you,” he said. 

“I should thank you again for driving to London to help me move into this place. I’ve never had a place that was just mine. It’s strange to wake up and have everything be exactly as I left it. And a little lonely.” 

Wolfgang turned a key blank over in his hand. 

“What’s wrong?” Kala asked. 

Wolfgang shook his head. “I have the strangest headache. And I keep having these dreams.” 

“About your father?” 

“No. It’s like I am a child in someone else’s family.” 

“That is strange.” 

“Felix wants to do a job, and I just can’t keep the details in my head.” 

Kala stood and walked around the table, to put her hands on his shoulders and rubbed them. Wolfgang leaned his head back against her chest and closed his eyes. “What’s it like? Working for BPO?” he asked. 

Wolfgang did not open his eyes but he could hear the smile in her voice. “Exciting,” she said. “Dr. El-Saadawi is a remarkable woman.” 

“Tell me about it,” he encouraged. 

“Really?” 

Without opening his eyes, Wolfgang nodded. 

And Kala talked about the team she was on, about the relief of getting away from the corrupt Indian pharmaceutical business. She talked about her team at BPO, a blend of sensate and sapien scientists, working on developing the understanding of how blockers impacted the sensate and sapien brains. As she talked, the headache subsided and he drifted off to sleep. 

****

He was looking up at a woman who held tight to his hand. She wore a blocky, crocheted pink hat and her other arm was raised in a fist as she shouted along with the large, raucous crowd, winding its way down a building-lined street. This time, he understood what they were saying. They were shouting in English. Slogans like “My body, my choice” and “Pussy grabs back!” reverberated through the crowd and off the buildings in waves. 

It was loud. It was powerful. It was like dancing in a packed club with the pounding beat and flashing lights and sweaty bodies. 

The hat on his head began to slip over his eyes, and he reached up to fix it, but it came off in his hand. A pink pussy-cap, like the woman’s, came free in his hand. The hand, he noticed, had a purple birthmark at the based of the thumb. 

And then the dream faded and he woke to a renewed headache and a crick in his neck from falling asleep on the key-sorting table. 

****

“This time, they are right!” Felix said as he came into the shop brandishing the poster tube. “Ann Bergman can’t fool…” He stopped short when he saw his friend. “Wolfie?” he said. 

Wolfgang looked up. He was sitting on the floor, scrubbing the corner where a display case met the floor with a toothbrush. 

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Wolfgang looked at the toothbrush in his hand and frowned. After a moment he pointed to the area he had finished. “Look how much cleaner it is!” 

Felix shook his head slowly and he offered a hand to Wolfgang. 

Wolfgang took Felix’s hand and let Felix pull him to his feet. 

“What is up with you?” Felix asked. 

Wolfgang looked at Felix and then looked away. For an instant, he was running through a playground, chasing a boy who was getting away. And then, just as quickly, he was sitting around a table with other kids, with scissors and cut up magazines strewn across the surface. And then he was standing over his father, firing a pistol that kicked back like crazy in his not-yet grown hands. He looked back at Felix. “What do you mean?” he said. 

Felix shook his head as he pulled the plans from the poster tube and spread them on the table. “I don’t know,” he said. “You are just off. The thing with the keys. The meeting you missed the other day with Fuchs. Now this?” he waved his hand at the toothbrush, still on the floor. 

Riley sat at the table watching the conversation. Wolfgang looked at her and she looked back. 

Wolfgang was standing in a child’s bedroom, littered with stuffed animals with giant eyes. For a moment, everyone one of their shiny, plastic-y eyes focused on him. 

Riley put a hand on his arm. “Take a breath,” she said to him. 

He did, and he was back, facing Felix. “I missed the meet with Fuchs?” he said. 

Felix shrugged. “I handled it.” 

Wolfgang sat down heavily in the chair and stared blankly at the table, spread with plans to the Bergman mansion. The first twinges of a migraine was growing behind his eyes. “Tell me about the plans,” he said, willing the distractions away. 

****

Wolfgang found himself sitting next to Riley, his head throbbing. The granite bench faced an unfamiliar city skyline, and the sun was creeping up, peeking between buildings. The tired buzz after a good show and the sweet taste of smoke in his mouth were comforting. 

They sat in silence for a while before Riley looked at him. 

“Where are you?” he asked her. 

“Boston,” she answered. He stared into the distance, watching the sun thread its way between the building, giving bursts of warmth as it peeked through and then disappeared. 

After a while, Riley said, “When I was pregnant, with Luna, I had the most intense dreams.” 

Wolfgang looked at her. Riley did not look back – she was watching the sun glint off the skyscrapers. “I dreamed I was flying, once,” she offered. “Another time, I watched the moonrise over the sea. It seemed to go on forever, and the light made a shiny path that I could walk on. It was so beautiful. “ 

Riley paused for a moment, a hint of a smile on her face. She offered Wolfgang the joint and he took a puff before handing it back. The headache loosened its grip. 

“The expectation was the best part,” Riley said softly. 

Wolfgang shook his head. “I can’t imagine that,” he said. 

Riley shrugged. “Someday,” she said. “You will.” 

****

Wolfgang tossed and turned in his bed. His head was hurting again. His pillow felt hard. He would fall asleep only to jerk himself awake, pulling away from nightmares of his father looming over him, his fist clenched, or him looming over the dead body of his father, of his uncle. 

And then he was seeing through another’s eyes and a different hand with dark skin was clenching a gun and running after someone he did not know, screaming. 

“Wolfgang,” Kala called to him, and he woke. She was laying down next to him, stroking his face with her long, beautiful fingers. 

“Wolfgang,” she said again. “Are you okay?” 

The sense of being someone else lingered, the echo of another boy’s shout in a language he did not know rang in his head, the prickle of another’s surge of adrenalin made him shake. “I keep having these dreams where I am a child, but it is not my childhood. The parents are not my parents. Their language is not my language.” He frowned. “That’s not quite right,” he said, thinking of the child with the pink cap. 

They were silent for a while and then he said, “Why children?” 

Kala stroked his hair and studied him. “I think I know.” 

“You do?” Suddenly he blinked and sat bolt upright. “Are you pregnant?” he asked. “Is that why I am dreaming of kids? Riley said…” 

Kala laughed and shook her head. “No, Wolfgang. I am not pregnant” 

Wolfgang frowned at her. 

“But I think you might be,” she said. 

Wolfgang said, “What?” 

Kala pulled at his arms, coaxing him to lay back down with her. “I think you are going to birth a cluster,” Kala said quietly. “I was reading about this, at work. In the time before the cluster birth, the parent will dream of their new cluster. The headaches come from the psychocillum, as it expands. It becomes more intense, until the connection is strong enough for you to visit.” 

Wolfgang shook his head as images of his own father flashed in his head. His father’s fist. His father pulling the belt from his pants. His father punching his mother. His father’s bulk, looming over. Then, he was looking up at himself as an adult, raising a small hand with a purple mark to protect his face, as his dream self swung a fist in anger. 

He squeezed his eyes shut and curled his knees to his chest. “No,” he said to Kala. “That can’t be right.” 

****

This time, it wasn’t a nightmare. For a while, he was playing soccer. Not in the violent, no-holds-barred way he played with Fuchs and others, but as a child, making chains of the dandelions that dotted the field and sitting shoulder to shoulder with a friend on the sideline, stuffing sweet oranges slices into their mouths and painting their faces with yellow pollen while they waited their turn on the field. 

Then he was with the other one, blasting at trumpet loud enough that it caused his sister to stomp out of her room and scream for their mother who as downstairs. 

And then he was with the first, turning clumsy cartwheels on the damp grass, until the bell rang for school. 

And then he was in a math class and he was writing on a sheet of paper, a pencil gripped in his fingers as it flew across the page. For a moment, Wolfgang separated from the other, and realized he could not follow anything on the page. But then, he was back with the other with his hand shot up and waving for the teacher’s attention. 

And then they faded and he dreamed of Angelica, and of the man who birthed Angelica’s cluster, and of the mother of that man’s cluster and on and on, back through a chain that stretched ages and cultures and eons. Angelica reached out a hand to him, and he took it. 

****

Wolfgang walked into the shop to find Felix sitting at the table in the back room, dutifully dropping keys into the sorting bin. Wolfgang pulled a chair out from the table, twisted it around, and sat down. 

Felix glanced at him. “Not sure why you couldn’t do this,” he said. 

Wolfgang shook his head. “I’m sorry. My head is a bit messed up right now.” 

“It’s okay to be a little fucked up in the head,” Felix quoted. 

Wolfgang looked at him and then shook his head. “I think I need some time,” he said. 

“Something with the cluster?” Felix asked. “With Kala?” 

Wolfgang looked at Felix and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Yes? I don’t know. But it’s just hard to focus right now.” 

Felix looked at Wolfgang, studying him and then he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “The job can wait.” 

***

Wolfgang sat at the counter of a bar, nursing a beer. He had driven an hour outside of Berlin and picked a place at random where no one would know him. He sat at the stool on the end. The stool next to his was empty. The regulars of this bar – tired, end-of-shift factory workers - ignored him and he ignored them. When he looked up, Kala was sitting delicately next to him. And then Will came up on the other side. “Are you sure you should be drinking in your condition?” Will asked. 

Wolfgang glanced at him as Lito clapped him on the shoulder and sat in the stool that Kala had been in a moment ago. “What’s it like?” Lito asked. 

And the Capheus pushed in between Will and Wolfgang. “This is great!” he exclaimed. 

Wolfgang glanced at Will, picked up the beer, and drank several gulps. Then he spun around the bar stool and faced them. 

“What are they like?” Lito asked. 

Wolfgang shook his head. “They are children? I think. Two of them, I think.” 

“Children?” said Will. “Has anyone heard of a cluster birth for children?” 

Nomi stepped in and said, “According to Dr. Francona’s book, children document extrasensory experiences at eight times the rate of adults.” 

Riley said, looking at Will, “Children often have imaginary friends.” 

Will replied, “And sometimes they are not so imaginary.” 

Sun looked around at the group. “Can you imagine what our lives would have been like if we had met as children?” 

They were silent for a moment, as they considered. And then Riley spoke quietly, “Such a small cluster. Just two?” 

“When do we get to meet them?” Lito asked. “We are going to be parents! Or,” he frowned. “Aunts and uncles? How does this work?” 

Wolfgang shook his head and he took another drink. He looked at each of them, meeting their eyes. “I don’t want to be my father,” he said. “You will stop me if I…” 

Kala put her hands on Wolfgang’s shoulders. “You aren’t doing this alone,” she said quietly, as the whole cluster gathered close around him. 

****

The migraine started out like any of the others, behind his eyes, radiating through his head, but this time it did not stop there. The pain woke him in the middle of the night as it collected in waves in his neck and spread to his shoulders. “Kala?” he called into the darkness and for a moment, Kala was there, spreading a cool cloth over his forehead. “I’m here,” she said to him. Every few minutes the pain crested, and advanced, and her fingers were cool on his face. “I am here,” she said again, but then he was not. 

He was standing in a grassy backyard, under a starry sky. The boy whose language he did not understand was bent over the eyepiece of a telescope. For a long time, Wolfgang watched him fiddle with the device, making minute adjustments. And then the boy looked up and met his eyes. Wolfgang felt his shock, confusion and fear. What was a stranger doing in his backyard? And then, a moment later, recognition. He felt something click, as it had when he had first seen Angelica. 

Then he was back in his room with the smell of crisp night air following him. He lost focus as the migraine’s power crested in his back and then eased for a moment. And then it crested again. “Kala,” he said. “I saw him. I saw the boy.” 

Riley was sitting beside him, holding his hand. “Kala is coming,” she said. “Capheus and Will and Nomi are helping her. We are with you.” And for a moment, they all gathered around. And then the migraine crested again, and he was no longer there. 

It was evening, and he was standing on a soccer pitch, bright lights illuminating the field. Two teams faced off, one in red, one in white. This was no longer a child’s game. This game had the intensity and passion of teenagers. He stood next to the red team’s keeper who was wearing a bright blue jersey. He watched her watch the field as her team zigged and zagged the ball. Then the white team had took possession and a single girl pelted down the field dribbling the ball, far ahead of the defenders. The goalie’s eyes were intent on the ball, but then the goalie caught sight of him. Their eyes locked. The striker shot the ball. The goalie launched into the air a moment too late and missed as the ball sailed past her gloves and into the net. She hit the ground hard. 

He laid on his side, half curled, as the pain radiated down his back and into his legs, into his arms, the impact of the fall mingling with the power of the headache. Riley sat by him, holding his hand. She said, “Midwives talk a lot of nonsense, but they are right about breathing.” She crouched down next to him, eye to eye. “Look at me, Wolfgang.” He met her eyes. “Breath with me.” 

He got through a dozen breaths, and the crests of the pain seemed more manageable. “I see them,” he said to her and she smiled. “Kala is almost here,” she said. 

And then was carried away again, but instead of finding himself back on the soccer pitch, or in a backyard, he found himself in an alley, an alley he knew well. He and Felix had used the alley as a cut through, and occasionally an escape, when they had been children. On one end of the alley, a small group of school-aged boys was shouting, “Go away!” and “Freak!” The boys threw rocks and garbage down the alley after their words, but the detritus fell short of where Wolfgang stood. Then the group turn their backs and left. Someone was crying and Wolfgang looked down. At his feet, crouched behind a trash can, a child cowered. The child was dirty and scratched and dressed in filthy, worn clothes. When their eyes met, Wolfgang knew them. 

The child’s eyes widened. “Are you here?” 

Wolfgang dropped to one knee. He shook his head and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “And no. I’m Wolfgang. I’m like you.”

“What does that mean?” 

“That’s going to take some time,” Wolfgang replied. “And those fuck-wits are getting away. Do you want to get them? I’ll help.” 

The child looked at him. “Can you really help?” 

Wolfgang smiled. “I can,” he replied.

Together Wolfgang and the child walked down the alley. The little gang was nowhere to be seen. “Do you know where they have gone?” 

The child shook his head. “No.” 

Wolfgang put his hand on the child’s shoulder. “We have time.” 

And then Wolfgang had the most remarkable experience. He was with all three, just for a flash. In a bedroom plastered with soccer posters, where the girl rolled over and met his eyes. On a street corner where a car rolled by and the telescope boy met his eyes through the window, and in a dirty alley in Berlin. And then the pain was gone and he let out a sigh as he fell back into Kala’s arms. 

He looked up at her and knew she was there, in the flesh and she bent her head and kissed him. “You did it,” she said. 

“We did it,” he replied. Then he frowned. “How did you get here from London?” 

“I drove,” she said. 

“Twelve hours?” 

Kala laughed quietly and amended her statement. “Fast,” she said and she kissed him again. “Will and Capheus helped. And Nomi gave the cops something else to do.” She settled him against her chest. “Tell me about them?” she asked. 

Wolfgang relaxed against her. The absence of he headache was almost as good as an orgasm. “Don’t let me be my father,” he said quietly. 

Kala shook her head, her cheek pressing against his. “You could never be that man,” she said. 

And then she kissed him again.


End file.
